Health Care Delivers As An Issue Of Top Concern

September 17, 2000|By Tim Jones, Tribune Staff Writer.

WATERFORD, Mich. — Katherine Innes takes pride in having a good ear for politics. She knows the buzz in her community, and what she hears these days has very little to do with the presidential campaign.

"This is like the un-election. No one is talking about it. You don't see it, you don't hear it. I've never seen anything like this," said Innes, supervisor of Waterford, a rapidly growing township 30 miles northwest of Detroit.

Maybe the absence of political yard signs, banned by local ordinance until early October, has dulled the awareness of a presidential campaign heading into its final seven weeks. Maybe prolonged economic prosperity has produced political apathy. And maybe the candidates themselves are doing little to instill a sense of urgency and public excitement in Michigan, a state Democrats and Republicans feel they need to win the White House.

"Everybody seems to be happy with what's going on," Innes said. "There are no burning issues. They're not angry about anything."

Angry? Perhaps not.

But if there is a common worry that connects voters in this 73,000-person suburb and surrounding communities in affluent Oakland County, it is health care--the cost, the quality, the future.

More than taxes, education, crime and so-called character issues, recent public opinion polls in Michigan show that health care concerns resonate with a broad cross-section of voters, many of whom are still digesting the complexities of Medicare reform proposals from Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Here, as in other states earmarked as battlegrounds for both campaigns, women voters are expected to play a strategically important role, just as they did in the elections of Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. They may even decide the presidential contest in those states.

Interviews with them underscored their concerns about health care and suggest a volatility to the issue. In the Republican fortress of Oakland County, there is no safe assumption that voters will embrace a plan that relies more on private insurers, as does the Bush proposal. At the same time, those who voted for President Clinton are not necessarily going to support a plan that strengthens the role of government in health care, as Gore's would do. Even in good economic times--and by most measures they have never been this good for this long in Michigan--there is a nagging sense of distress about health-care costs that are taking an increasingly bigger chunk out of paychecks.

The combination of low unemployment, a robust economy, the lack of what Innes called a burning issue and voter apathy could further elevate the importance of health care.

Medicare is the government-run health-care program for the elderly, but in this campaign it has become a catchall phrase for a wide variety of health-care problems affecting the uninsured, the self-insured, the elderly and children of the elderly. The worries are not confined to a particular age group.

"American health care has gone down the tubes. It's a mess what they've done with it," said Pat Dittmar, a hairdresser in Waterford who said her monthly premium for private health insurance has jumped to $389, from last year's level of $280. Admittedly "wishy-washy" about the candidates, Dittmar, 53, said she cannot make up her mind. A self-proclaimed independent, she voted for Clinton twice.

"I want to hear what they have to say in the debates, especially on health care. That's the big one for me," Dittmar said.

Kitty Szpyrka, a 44-year-old registered nurse whose husband is a self-employed insurance broker, said their monthly health insurance premium will jump to $900 next year. "My husband deals with this every day and he gets blamed for the increases," Szpyrka said. She said she will vote for Bush because "I like small government." If Gore gets elected, she said, medical costs "will go right through the roof."

Vangie Roja ran a restaurant and worked in a factory in western Michigan. Since her divorce and retirement in 1994, the 61-year-old Roja said she has suffered a heart attack and is struggling to pay for prescriptions to treat asthma, inflammation and a skin condition. So she moved in with her daughter in Waterford because she can't afford to live on her own.

"It's good for me that she has a good job." Roja said. She will vote for Gore "because he can continue what Clinton left."

And then there is Cynthia Page, a 70-year-old widow who sells produce at the Waterford Farmers Market. "You know the old saying `They shoot horses, don't they?' When it comes my time, that's what I want because I can't afford the treatment," Page said.

These complaints are not unique, but they are important in a swing state like Michigan, with 18 electoral votes, and Oakland County, the nation's third-richest county. Waterford supported Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and in this year's GOP primary backed Sen. John McCain of Arizona.